The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 constituted a strong exogenous shock on economic activity that compounded that of the First World War. In this paper, we condition the economic importance of these shocks on the level of economic freedom measured by the HIEL project (Prados de la Escosura 2016)...

What is the relationship, if any, between economic freedom and pandemics? This paper addresses this question from a robust political economy approach. As is the case with recovery from natural disasters or warfare, a society that is relatively free economically offers economic actors greater...

Does a country's level of inequality affect its ability to win Olympic medals? If it does, is it conditional on institutional factors? We argue that the ability of economically free societies to win medals will not be affected by inequality. In these societies, institutions generate incentives...

Douglass North is known largely for his work on institutions (1981; 1990; 1991; 2005; North and Thomas 1973; North, Wallis and Weingast 2009). This legitimate emphasis on this segment of his work overshadows his earlier contributions regarding the empirical measurement of the past. Yet, when awarding him the Nobel...

We argue that institutions are bundles that involve trade-offs in the government’s ability to provide public goods that affect public health. We hypothesize that economic freedom reduces diseases of poverty and may increase diseases of commerce (those associated with free movement of people,...